God is no one's Fool

We spent yesterday evening with some grieving friends. No, they didn't lose someone, not in the classic sense anyway. But someone near and dear to them -- a Christian -- steadily, surely is walking away from Christ -- moving step by step to immorality and will not listen to anyone's warning or admonition.

Then I opened my Bible this morning and read two passages: one, Ezra 8:21-9:15. That one is the account of Ezra's mourning, fasting and prayer over how his people so gladly welcomed God releasing them from the slavery of captivity, then so blatantly snubbed Him, ignoring His warning not to intermarry with the pagan people in the land around them. The second passage was 1 Corinthians 5:1-13. It's Paul record of how dumbfounded he was that the church in Corinth just "overlooked" (and even seemed glad about) the gross sin of one of their members. Both passages hold dire warnings that God -- as much as we think He will -- won't play our fool and overlook what we know is in essence a disregard of Him when we actively choose sin.

Then I was reading in "God: As He Longs for You to See Him" (Chip Ingram) in the chapter on "The Holiness of God." Writing about Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) Chip says, "They chose to make a mockery of other believers, God's holiness and the privilege of giving. They treated God as someone they could fool. God, everyone discovered, will not be mocked....."

"If you are hard-headed like me, the experience can be tough because the vice often gets very tight before I even start paying attention. God often uses our finances, our circumstances and our relationships. He will do whatever it takes to get as much of our attention as he needs to say, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'"

Wrong Number?

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ
so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)

I was reminded last week of a sweet little elderly lady we knew in Kansas City. She came to mind, because -- I had a note to call the cell phone number of a man who had called a few weeks earlier, asking what small groups we would offer this Fall. We've got our list together -- and it's a good one! -- so I called. But, I was one digit off (the older I get the more dyslexic!). When another name was on the voice mail, I knew what I'd done. I didn't leave a message, but hung up and redialed correctly. A couple of hours later, the "wrong number" called me back -- in a hesitating voice, (having called a "church" -- and we know how much fear there is in that!) he said, "someone called my number....?". I explained I'd dialed incorrectly -- and he -- again with almost sounding sad, said, "okay" -- and that's when the little lady from Kansas City came to mind. She got more telemarketers and "wrong number" callers calling her than anyone in the Midwest! And regularly, sitting in her room in a nursing home, unable to get out much, she shared Jesus Christ with nearly all those callers! And in the prayer time, she'd share, often, how another one had come to faith, because of calling the wrong number!

Christians used to term those "chance" meetings divine appointments-- God arranged meetings! I wonder why we don't think like that anymore!

Pray for yourself, II

A great idea, from Chip Ingram in Good to Great in God's Eyes -- the last book the elders and I read together: in his chapter on "Dream Great Dreams" he says, write out your God-given dreams, and then pray over them regularly. Here's one illustration from my stack of 3 x 5's, now in my One-Year Bible:

Finish Well
I long to be faithful to Christ, and to the people He has and will place around me, until the day I die.

Pray for yourself

<sup>One of my "summer plan for growth" goals was to read through, print, then pray every day, one of the prayers of Paul for the Ephesians and Colossians. (Remember, those are the parts we usually skip over quickly to get to the rest of the letters!)

It's been an amazing exercise. Along with time in the Word, and now praying some additional things for myself, my mind and heart have gotten re-focused, and for the most part, the days are filled with more awareness of what God wants to do in my life and I'm more willing to be available to let Him do it. Try it out for 90 days! Here's one of several:

9</sup> For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰ And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. ¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:9-14

What am I out to prove?

There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself ...there have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. C.S. Lewis

Today Matters

I'm working this week on what I thought would be the most straightforward of the messages on "Satan's plan for your life" -- this one is "he wants you in a spiritual coma" from 2 Corinthians 11:1-3 (And now I'm afraid that exactly as the Snake seduced Eve with his smooth patter, you are being lured away from the simple purity of your love for Christ.); so far it's not so straightforward! But I was encouraged and challenged by a good and strong word from C.S. Lewis; he wrote,

"Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Grace at the Table

Jesus shared the Last Supper with Judas. He offered it to Judas, even knowing He'd already determined to betray Him. Jesus invites me to the table too. He knows all about me, as much as about Judas, but He still loves me and invites me there. I like the story of the Scottish girl who came in from the Highlands to the city of Edinburgh, started hanging with the wrong friends, and soon was living an immoral life. It was against all she'd learned as a kid in Sunday School and Church; one Sunday she slipped into a church covered with shame and need. They were celebrating communion that day, and when a sweet old deacon came by with the plate, she shook her head sadly and said: "I can't take it. I'm too unclean." The old deacon, well versed in the Gospel, whispered: "All the more reason to take it lassie. It's not meant for saints. It's for sinners. Not worthiness but willingness, that's the issue."